Currently reading Fool by Christopher Moore.

Well, this explains all the picture-only posts in the What are you reading now? topic. 

 

Most Britons have lied about the books they read

LONDON (Reuters) - Two out of three Britons have lied about reading books they have not, and George Orwell's "1984" tops the literary fib list, according to a survey published Thursday.

Commissioned by organizers of World Book Day, an annual celebration of reading in Britain, the study also shows that the author people really enjoy reading is J.K. Rowling, creator of the bestselling Harry Potter wizard series.

According to the survey, 65 percent of people have pretended to have read books, and of those, 42 percent singled out "1984." Next on the list came "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy and in third place was James Joyce's "Ulysses."

The Bible was in fourth position, and newly elected President Barack Obama's autobiography "Dreams from My Father" came ninth.

Aside from a list of ten titles which respondents were asked to tick or leave blank, many admitted wrongly claiming they had read other "classics" including Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Herman Melville.

Asked why they had lied about reading a book, the main reason was to impress the person they were speaking to.

The study, carried out on the World Book Day website in January and February, surveyed 1,342 members of the public.

Those who lied have claimed to have read:

1. 1984 - George Orwell (42 percent)

2. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (31)

3. Ulysses - James Joyce (25)

4. The Bible (24)

5. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (16)

6. A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking (15)

7. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (14)

8. In Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust (9)

9. Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama (6)

10. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins (6)

 

Big deal, I have not read all those books three or four times.

Then US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who had put the total cost at just $50-60 billion, has been off by some three to five trillion dollars on the cost, according to Stiglitz and Bilmes in The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict...

 greg6494 wrote: 
Great Book.. Really great book. 

 Talalala wrote: 

Wow....I just looked him up on Wikipedia, what a life.  I'm going to be joining a friend's book club and when it comes to me to choose the book, I'll be picking this one.

Probably my 10th time through it...still love his prose
(and yes i'm well aware of the accusations against him
which unfortunately led to his suicide).

 Talalala wrote: 
I can imagine how you were sucked into this. Mark Everett is a very interesting guy who seems to have escaped a spiral of emotional misery. His music lately doesn't seem as dark and sardonic as it once was. Maybe it reflects his improved outlook.

dionysius wrote:
awesome..maybe I can find it online.  :) 

 Talalala wrote: 

You should see the PBS Nova documentary about him and his father Hugh Everett, a famous physicist who proposed the "Many Worlds" hypothesis. It's called "Nova: Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives" and you can read more about it here. Mary and I saw this a few weeks ago, and were entranced.

For those who like to read non-fiction from musicians, I read


this weekend..  I just took a couple of days because I got so sucked into E's life.  For you who aren't sure who Mark Oliver Everett is, he is the lead singer of the band 'The Eels'. 
This guy survived some intensely emotional shite and survived.  Mostly because he was able to express it in his songwriting, never giving in to what the record companies wanted him to do.  He stayed true to himself despite some seriously messed up situations! 

 

Show me the sky

woozurbuddy wrote: What's Jim Harrison like?  (i'm always trolling for stuff I might like)

And I lurve the short stories best-of every year!

I'm still reading "The Terror Presidency" by Jack Goldsmith, former Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel  (ISBN: 978-0-393-06550-3).  It's all about how Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez et al. made conscious and informed decisions to break the law.

latest audio books:

Discworld #7 (Pyramids) by Terry Pratchett — excellent of course

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card — excellent (except I hated the woman narrator)

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon — meh

Longshot - by Dick Frances — usually I like Francis, but after an hour I gave up as it was vapid and dull and had not yet delved into any semblance of plot.

Like Water For Chocolate

Very good book!

Wicked

Recomend it. Actually I listened to it on CD.

The Lovely Bones.  I have a two-year old daughter.  I don't know if I can keep reading this book.  Tears roll out the corners of my eyes when I read anything about Susie's family, but especially her father.  I can't help but think what if...?